Stop Making Sense

Each month we showcase a movie selected by one of our VIFF+ Premium members. This month, Adam PW Smith shares a personal favourite. Universally acclaimed as one of the greatest concert films ever made, Stop Making Sense documents the groundbreaking Talking Heads at their peak.

This film is constantly running in my head whenever I am called on to photograph or film a musical performance. It feels like a perfect combination of two of my favourite things — documentary and live music. For years it was a visual treat, and now with the lovingly remixed Atmos soundtrack, it sounds like one too. I was astonished when I watched it at the renovated VIFF theatre — I heard things that in 40 years of repeated listening I had never heard before. This is a masterclass in live performances, filmmaking, and audio production.

Adam PW Smith

Over the course of three nights at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in December 1983, filmmaker Jonathan Demme joined creative forces with cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth and Talking Heads… and miracles occurred. Following a staging concept by singer-guitarist David Byrne, this euphoric concert film transcends that all-too-limited genre to become the greatest film of its kind. A guaranteed cure for anyone’s blues, it’s a celebration of music that never grows old, fueled by the polyrhythmic pop-funk precision that was a Talking Heads trademark, and lit from within by the geeky supernova that is David Byrne.

The staging — and Demme’s filming of it — builds toward an orgasmic release of music, rising from the bare-stage simplicity of Byrne, accompanied only by a boom box on “Psycho Killer,” to the ecstatic crescendo of “Burning Down the House,” by which time the Heads and additional personnel have all arrived on stage for a performance that seems channeled from heaven for the purpose of universal uplift. (God bless Demme for avoiding shots of the luckiest audience in ’80s pop history; its presence is acknowledged, but not at the viewer’s expense.) With the deliriously eccentric Byrne as ringleader (pausing mid-concert to emerge in his now-legendary oversized suit), this circus of musical pleasure defies the futility of reductive description; it begs to be experienced, felt in the heart, head, and bones, and held there the way we hold on to cherished memories. On those three nights in December 1983, Talking Heads gave love, life, and joy in generous amounts that years cannot erode, and Demme captured this act of creative goodwill on film with minimalist artistic perfection. Stop Making Sense is an invitation to pleasure that will never wear out its welcome.

Jeff Shannon

One of the most exciting concert films ever.

David Ansen, Newsweek

The overwhelming impression throughout Stop Making Sense is of enormous energy, of life being lived at a joyous high.

Roger Ebert